Living, learning and loving in Lyon !

Tales from the other side of the desk

I’m studying French for a year, at the CIEF – Centre International d’Etudes Françaises, a language school at the Université Lumière Lyon 2. I’m doing a semi-intensive course, 4 hours per day, Monday to Friday. Oh excuse me, Lundi au Vendredi…

My Semester 1 timetable looks like this:

Mon: 8 – 12 with Jean-Yves (how French is that!)

Tue : 2 – 6 with Muriel

Wed: 8 – 12 with Jean-Yves

Thu: 2 – 6 with Muriel

Fri: 2 – 6 with Laurianne

I’m in Group A1 (prep, really!) with 13 others from all around the globe – China, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Mexico, USA, Algeria and Bulgaria. We’ve learnt the alphabet, numbers up to 100 and how to spell our names. Seriously!

Of course, we’re learning a lot more than that – greetings, questions, adjectives, positive/negative sentences, and the dreaded conjugations! Something I’d not realised was how lucky I am that my first language uses the same alphabet as the French language. It’s harder for those that have a different alphabet.